Born on this day
Friday, January 2, 1920. : Chemist and science-fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, is born.
Isaac Asimov was born on 2 January 1920 in Petrovichi, USSR. When he was three years old, his family emigrated to America, settling in Brooklyn, New York. Asimov entered Columbia University at the age of 15 and studied biochemistry, later teaching at Boston University. However, he is best known for his prolific writing, particularly of the science fiction genre.
Asimov’s first story, Marooned Off Vesta, was written when he was 18. Over the next two and a half years, he published over 30 more short stories, gaining prominence with “Nightfall”, in 1941. “Nightfall” was a significant step in Asimov’s writing career, and in 1968 was proclaimed by the Science Fiction Writers of America as the best science fiction short story ever written. He is best known for his ‘Foundation’ series, which began with the Foundation Trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953), and was continued with Foundation’s Edge (1982), Foundation and Earth (1986), Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992). Asimov also wrote the robot stories, which promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (the Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. I, Robot, Asimov’s first book, is a short story collection describing a future society in which humans coexist with nearly sentient robots.
Asimov died on 6 April 1992.
Australian History
Wednesday, January 2, 1822. : A penal settlement is established at Macquarie Harbour on the remote west coast of Van Diemen’s Land.
Tasmania was first discovered by Dutch trader Abel Tasman in November 1642. Tasman discovered the previously unknown island on his voyage past the “Great South Land”, which he later called “New Holland”. He named the island “Antony Van Diemen’s Land” in honour of the High Magistrate, or Governor-General of Batavia.
After the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip claimed the entire eastern coast for the British Empire, including Tasmania, though it was not yet known to be separate from the mainland. In January 1799 Bass and Flinders completed their circumnavigation of Tasmania, proving it to be an island. In order to offset continuing French interests in southern parts of Australia, Lieutenant John Gordon Bowen was sent to establish the first British settlement at Risdon Cove in Van Diemen’s Land in 1803. Lieutenant-Governor David Collins moved the settlement to Sullivans Cove, which was later renamed Hobart Town, on the Derwent River in 1804. In the same year, the British Government appointed Lieutenant-Colonel William Paterson as Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land and instructed him to form a settlement at Port Dalrymple in the north of the island.
Van Diemen’s Land was valued for its remoteness from the mainland, and another penal colony was proposed for the west coast. On 2 January 1922, a secondary penal colony was established on Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour. It housed the worst convicts and those who had escaped from other settlements in a mountain wilderness which was only accessed through a treacherous narrow channel called Hell’s Gates, in which many a boat carrying convicts floundered. Convicts were treated harshly, chained while they logged the local Huon Pine and rafted it downstream. Others worked in the local shipbuilding industry. Those requiring solitary confinement were sent to nearby Grummet Island for a given period of time. However, by 1829, the settlement had become much less harsh, as convicts responded to a reward system that enabled them to develop other useful skills and trades.
The Macquarie Harbour settlement operated for eleven years, from 1822 until 1833, with approximately 1,150 male and 30 female prisoners serving time. In 1833, the penal settlement was moved to Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula in the south.
Australian History
Sunday, January 2, 1955. : South Australia’s Vice-Regal Summer Residence, Marble Hill, is destroyed by bushfires.
Marble Hill was the grand summer residence of the Governor of South Australia. Situated in the bushland of the Adelaide Hills, it was an ideal location to catch any summer breezes, whilst it also held commanding views of the surrounding countryside.
The 1870s was a time of economic boom for South Australia. When William Jervois became Governor in 1877, he commissioned the construction of a grander residence than the country retreat of Government Farm at Belair. Jervois supervised the architecture and selected the site. The first stone for the Marble Hill residence was laid on 18 July 1878, and the building was completed by late 1879.
The Vice-Regal Summer Residence, as it was known, was designed in Victorian Gothic Revival style, based on Scottish baronial castles and adapted for Australian conditions with the addition of spacious verandahs on three sides which shielded the interior from the intense northern sun. Constructed from locally quarried sandstone, its 26 rooms included a drawing room, a morning room, a dining room and a grand staircase of kauri pine and blackwood.
The Adelaide Hills are notorious for their bushfires, with several threatening Marble Hill through the years. The first of these was in 1882, whilst successive bushfires in 1901, 1910, 1912, 1930 and 1939 all came frighteningly close. However, it was the 1955 bushfires which completely destroyed the Vice-Regal Summer Residence.
The summer of 1954-55 had been marked by extreme temperatures. By midday of 2 January 1955, on what came to be known as Black Sunday, temperatures had reached 42 degrees by midday, and a fire which had broken out at nearby Anstey’s Hill was being fanned by 70 kph winds. After trying to fight the fire, Sir Robert and Lady George, their family, staff and servants were forced to shelter under wet blankets in the lee of a retaining wall while the fire completely destroyed the building.
The cost of rebuilding was considered too prohibitive for the time, and the ruins were eventually dedicated to the National Trust of South Australia as a public reserve, in 1967. In recent years, the property has been taken over by private interests, with restoration work currently being undertaken.
World History
Monday, January 2, 1860. : The existence of the theoretical planet Vulcan, between Mercury and the Sun, is announced.
Vulcan was a small planet believed to orbit between Mercury and the Sun. Its “discovery” was announced on 2 January 1860, by French mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier. Le Verrier hypothesised that Mercury’s unusual orbital motion around the sun was influenced by another planet.
The belief in the possibility that another planet existed close to the sun had begun in the early 1840s when small black spots were observed across the sun. Not seeming to be sunspots, the only other explanation seemed to be that another planet was travelling with Mercury during its transit. These reports were unconfirmed, but they piqued interest. In 1840 François Arago, director of the Paris Observatory, suggested Le Verrier explore the subject.
Using a model based on Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation, together with his own experience in celestial mechanics, Le Verrier determined that Mercury’s orbital irregularities were caused by the planet he named Vulcan. Vulcan was so named after the Roman god of fire, suitable for a planet so close to the sun. Many continued to believe Vulcan existed until 1915, when Einstein explained the orbit of Mercury using his theory of general relativity.
Le Verrier went to his grave, certain of planet Vulcan’s position in the galaxy. Interestingly, Vulcan’s existence was revived for the successful science fiction series “Star Trek”, in the 1960s, and continued to play a major part in future movies and spin-off series.
World History
Saturday, January 2, 1869. : The world’s first traffic light explodes, injuring the policeman operating it.
The world’s first traffic light was operating in London, England, even before the advent of the automobile. Installed at a London intersection in 1868, it was a revolving gas-lit lantern with red and green signals. However, on 2 January 1869, the light exploded, injuring the policeman who was operating it. It was not until the early 1900s that Garrett Morgan, an African-American living in Cleveland, Ohio, developed the electric automatic traffic light, originally based on a semaphore-system.
Shortly after this, Detroit police officer William L Potts realised that a universal system would be needed. Potts developed the first 4-way three colour traffic light using red, amber, and green railroad lights. The first such light was installed on the corner of Woodward and Michigan Avenues in Detroit, in 1920. During the ensuing year, another 15 were installed throughout Detroit, proving to be such a success that they gradually spread to other major centres.
World History
Saturday, January 2, 1971. : 66 die in a crowd crush at a football match in Scotland.
Ibrox park, now Ibrox Stadium, in Glasgow, Scotland, was the scene of many disasters last century. The first occurred on 5 April 1902 when a section of terracing at the back of the West Stand collapsed, sending football fans plunging 12m to the ground below. 26 were killed and hundreds more injured. Further incidents in ensuing years, particularly in association with stairway 13, killed 2 and injured scores.
The second major disaster occurred on 2 January 1971, at the end of a game between Celtic and Rangers. When Celtic finally scored a goal towards the finish of a scoreless game, thousands of Rangers stood up to leave, believing the game to be over. As they started to make their way down the notorious stairway 13, Rangers scored an equalising goal, causing a roar to erupt from fans still in the stadium. Some people on the stairway stopped, but others higher up kept moving, causing a crush for those below. The momentum of the crowd resulted in excessive pressure on the crush barriers, which then collapsed. Ultimately, 66 people were killed in the crush, with hundreds more injured. The incident remains the worst disaster in the history of Scottish football.